


That Voodoo That We Don't Do

by TehChou



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M, Zombie!Danny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-23
Updated: 2011-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-19 17:50:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehChou/pseuds/TehChou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A week after he dies in a plane crash Danny shows up at Steve's dripping all over his floor, singed and stinking. MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH fix-its in the "omake".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It's stupid, Steve thinks, because Danny'd been laughing nervously, telling him all the statistics about how flying was the safest form of transportation, the same ones he'd been telling him over and over all week. He's flying to Jersey to visit his family, an emergency regarding a will and a sick family member. He's flown before, of course when he moved to the island, but, he says to Steve, it never gets any easier.

So it's kind of a surprise when he shows up at his door a little over a week after his death bedraggled and dripping, clothes singed half off his body. Steve mostly just feels sick and wonders if he's going insane. "You," he starts, but Danny cuts him off with a waved hand, pushes past him. It would be embarrassing how easily he manages this, but. Well.

Danny toes off his barely there shoes at the entrance. Steve stares at the bare flesh showing through the numerous holes in his socks. He's missing a toe.

"Shit," Danny says noisily and Steve jerks his head up. At least he sounds the same. "I could totally use a beer right now." He sprawls out on the couch, leaving a trail of water and something darker, redder behind. He makes a gesture with one hand and oh, he's missing half a finger, too. Steve feels bile rise in his throat, distantly like he's come apart from his body.

"Danny," he asks carefully around the feeling.

"Yeah, babe?" He shoots him an extra cheeky grin, half his teeth showing through a tear.

"You're not real," Steve informs him and his voice is hoarse and he's squinting through tears that don't come, haven't come at all. Not even at the funeral. It had been closed, empty casket, his body not yet recovered. Danny's smile falls off his face. He shakes his head, hair slapping wetly against his skin, all the gel washed out. He pats the cushion beside him.

"No, no, Steve you got it all wrong. Com'ere, siddown, let's talk." Steve's gaze rivets on the hand laying against the couch for a long moment before his hind-brain takes over and he drifts towards him, sitting gingerly on the very edge. Danny throws his arm around the back of the couch.

"Hey you," he says, crinkles at the edges of his eyes. He looks fond, even with so much of his face missing. Steve swallows around a dry throat.

"You- I- What is this? What are you-" his mouth fishes at the air, opening and closing without another word forcing itself past the ache in his chest. Danny shrugs, dragging a finger down the back of his neck. Steve startles and goes ridged at the sudden contact.

"Hey, hey, it's okay, I'm here, I'm fine," Steve stares at him like he's gone mad. Danny grimaces. "Well, alright I'm mostly here. Better then not being here at all, yeah?" His battered lips twist into a wry grin, exposed muscle flexing. The scent of cooked flesh is thick in the air and Steve does hurl, then. He puts his head between his legs and empties the admittedly minimal contents of his stomach onto his father's rug. Danny's at his side in a moment, pressed up against him, rubbing a soothing hand over his back.

"Jesus McGarrett, what the hell," and just sounds like himself when he's worried and Steve can squeeze his eyes shut and pretend. He's seen shit like this before, during his times in the SEALs, in places where skepticism never took over and people don't keep tight lips on the strange things that go on behind closed doors. He's heard stories of creatures undead that appear before loved ones to torment them, to offer comfort, sometimes to drag them from their homes and lead them to where they're never heard from, again. He wonders tiredly which one Danny's here for. He decides pretty quickly that it doesn't matter. It should worry him, but he's been awake for three days, since the funeral, can't sleep past the grit in his eyes. His thoughts are so much molasses, anyways. Construct, hallucination, ghost, _zombie_ , it doesn't matter. It's the first time he's felt _tired_ since he heard about his death. He draws his feet up, careful not to drag them in vomit and curls up on the couch, Danny's bare side pressed against his cheek. He's warm where he touches him, despite how clammy and waterlogged he'd looked when Steve last opened his eyes. The burnt smell recedes. Steve doesn't think too hard about it. Danny strokes a hand through his hair.

"Yeah, I missed you, too you big goof," and Steve finally, finally drifts off.

He awakens to the smell of cooking, of pancakes, crowding out the memory of meat still lingering in the sleepy corners of his brain. He finds it's easy to inhale and enjoy the sweet scent. Danny's cooked pancakes almost every other morning for half a year, now and it's soothing, even if he balked at all the carbs and made him mix ground flax into the batter. (That’s what relationships _are_ , after all, compromise.) He stands up, sways a little as the world rocks around him and his brain gets used to being awake, again. He hasn't felt this bone deep weary in a long, long time. He braces a hand on the couch and starts to stagger his way into the kitchen, glancing at the two pairs of shoes sitting on the mat by the door. Danny's pair looks less wrecked then he remembers from last night and he nearly embarrasses himself falling flat on his face as his memories of the night before rush back. His knuckles go white on their grip of the couch and he blinks rapidly a few times to clear his spinning head. The wet marks in the carpet have dried; someone cleaned up his vomit and the spots of red while he was sleeping.

Danny.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. He makes his way into the kitchen.

"Morning sunshine," Danny greets him, beaming. He's got his good cheek turned towards him and he's flipping a pancake on the griddle, little soft pink strawberries dotted through the batter. It smells even sweeter on his pallet this close to the source. Steve gives him a wavering smile back and sits heavily down on the chair. He slouches, arms tangled together, cool palm resting against his forehead and watches him through the gaps in his fingers. Danny looks better today, less singed. More like he's alive.

"Still here," Steve points out quietly. Danny flaps a hand at him.

"Of course. I'm not gonna leave you without your breakfast. What would I be unleashing on the world?" He raises his arms in front of himself, face going slack, tongue lolling and he mimics shambling towards Steve, making grunting noises. Steve gapes at him. Okay, that's just surreal. "You're like that before your run and your food." Danny grins and goes back to flipping pancakes.

"...Jesus Christ, Danny, do you just live to make terrible jokes," Steve sounds choked but Danny just laughs bright and clear.

They spend the rest of the morning lazing around at home. Steve doesn't even bother to leave the house for his daily routine.

"No swim? No run?" Danny asked, then looked at him like a pod person when he shook he his head. Steve had laughed a little helplessly at the implications of that.

He gets a call from Chin sometime a few hours after breakfast.

"Hey brah," he says, voice gentle. Steve scowls a little to hide the lump in his throat. He grunts. Chin pauses a moment like he's maybe waiting for him to say more, then: "You eat today?" He asks casually, like he and Kono aren't waiting on standby to streak over to his home with meals fresh cooked from the Kelly/Kalakaua clan. It makes him smile, a little.

"Yeah," he says, voice gruff though if it's with warmth instead of irritation, well who's keeping track? "I had pancakes." Something in the way he says it must come through over the phone because he can almost hear the tentative, half smile in his voice when Chin replies.

"Ah. Good. That's good, brah. I was thinking of maybe swinging by during lunch. You want me to pick anything up?" Steve blinks, feeling a little shell-shocked. He shouldn't, this is standard procedure by now. Chin and Kono haven't left him alone much in the last week.

"I-" He starts. Chin interrupts him.

"I'll get a bag of Cocopuffs, eh. A little more comfort food will do you good. See ya then." Steve holds the phone away from his face and stares at it helplessly as it blares the disconnect at him. Danny comes in the room, toweling off his hands. He'd been doing the dishes. He leans a hip on the entryway, watching him.

"Who was that," he asks, tone neutral and face curiously blank.

"Chin Ho," he answers. "He's uh- he's coming over with lunch, later." A look flashes across Danny's face, too fast for Steve to catalogue as off his game as he is. It spreads into a sunny smile.

"Great," he says and rubs his hands together. "What's he bringing us?"

For the rest of the morning Steve moves around in a fog, mind blissfully blank. No debilitating grief rips through him, no anger, just the fog and Danny, _Danny_ tucked up against his side as they watch whatever crap TV they find. There's anxiety still, buried deep and humming at the back of his mind, but Steve can't remember when he felt so comfortable, so at home. It drifts over his limbs and through his thoughts so that when Chin knocks at the door a little after three he's startled awake from a light doze. He scowls, annoyed with himself and goes to get the door but Danny puts a hand on his arm.

"Nah, let me, I wanna see him," and he crooks a grin, brushes a thumb across Steve's cheek and stands. Steve shakes himself out his lethargy and stands with him anyways, though he hangs back a little when Danny opens the door.

"Hey, you remembered," Danny says brightly. The look on Chin's face might be comical any other time, eyes huge, lips parting. "Man, these are so good." Danny continues and takes the bag from him.

"Danny?" Chin sounds lost, handing it over without protest. His brow furrows and he goes to speak, again, and abruptly his face smooths out into a blank mask. "Of course I remembered, brah." He says easily and Danny tips him a wink.

"Better then ma's lasagna. Bu-bye now," and he shuts the door in his face. He turns his back on it and tears open the box to shove one Cocopuff into his mouth, chewing contentedly.

"Yu wa wun," he asks around the mouthful, holding the box out to Steve. Steve's brows furrow.

"What the hell was that, Danny?" He asks him. Danny frowns, swallows and Steve suddenly has a flash to last night, of teeth poking through muscle and sinew, a hole that's now gone like it never even existed. The band around Steve's chest squeezes a little tighter.

"What was what?" Danny asks. Steve gestures at him.

"That, the thing with Chin, what-" Danny's rolling his eyes and sighing. He sets the box down on the coffee table and steps into Steve's space, cutting him off by laying his hands on his shoulders.

"Can you really blame me for wanting to spend a little time alone with you," he asks. His thumbs rub circles into the muscles just under his collar bone, sweep up to stroke the side of his neck. Steve's eye darts down. Danny's hand is whole.

"...There's a difference between wanting to spend a little time and, what was that? Did you mojo Chin?" Danny gives him a mock affronted look.

"Steve," he says, sternly. "Come on, you don't want him around for _this_ , do you?"

Danny's leaning in, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck and pulling him down. He tastes like chocolate pastry and Steve can't help that his arms come up around him, yanking him in tight. He clings to him like he'll disappear if he lets go. He just might, too.

"No, Danny, that's not good enough. I need to know what's going on," he says when they pull back. He raises a hand and touches his cheek hesitantly, like maybe drawing attention to it'll make it come back. Danny quirks a brow around his searching fingers and shrugs.

"What makes you think I know anymore then you do?" He answers easily. "Come on, let's not look this thing in the mouth, alright. Please, babe? I just," he grimaces, tugs him back down to press their foreheads together. "I don't want this to be over. Not yet." He brushes his lips against the side of his mouth. Steve closes his eyes and gives in.

He wakes up abruptly curled up on his bed, memory swirling around his head snippets of salty skin, carbon and iron.

He sits up, eyes going wide. Dream, was it a dream? Is Danny- The movement sets off a startling round of coughing in him. He feels like he's been hit by a truck, exhaustion seeping in to every limb and he curls forward, clutching at himself and moaning.

A hand lays itself on his back and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

Danny's leaning over the bed, watching him with worried eyes. Steve feels something inside him relax, again, though he's still coughing like it's going out of style.

"Danny," he hacks. "I thought I dreamed you."

"Naw babe, you'd have to do a lot more then that to get rid of me," and he presses a kiss to the back of his neck.

He’s just got his fingers tangled up in the his hair when the door’s knocked down.

Kono appears from the wreckage, gun up and pointed, an accusing metal line.

“Steve,” she barks at the same time Danny yells: “What the fuck?!”

Steve blinks back the spots swimming before his eyes and frowns at her.

“Kono, what-” he begins.

“Jesus Christ, really seriously? This is honestly what you’ve been learning from this neanderthal here?” Danny’s still ranting. Kono shoots him a look.

“So I was kinda surprised to see Chin back so early,” she says, sharply. “And even more so when he’s acting strange and talking about how he saw you, Danny, when he went to Steve’s place and then he passed out in the middle of HPD.” Danny’s jaw is jumping where his teeth are grit and he’s glaring at her.

“Seriously Kalakaua, this is not your business,” he tells her, voice an ugly warning and she snorts, unimpressed.

“He’s fine, by the way. Took him to the hospital and they said it’s just exhaustion and it caused him to hallucinate.” She points her gun a little more emphatically and Steve grits his teeth around the headache pounding between his eyes, tries desperately to follow the conversation. He keeps getting lost in the specks that are floating around the room. Danny’s up, standing between him and the gun, only she isn’t pointing at Steve, is she?

“But we both know that’s not quite true, don’t we,” she says, sharply and what? Okay, yeah, right, Chin and man, Steve’s never seen Kono look so mad. As he watches her face crumples and she lets the gun fall just a little. She’s looking straight at him now, at Steve and she makes a noise that sounds like it’s punched out of her.

“Shit, Steve. You look like-,” she shakes her head quickly and Steve’s starting to wake up a little, starting to get his feet and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the sharp points of moisture beading in the corners of her eyes. “Danny, you’re _dead_ you jackass, what the hell do you think you’re doing, you’re killing him!”

Danny shakes his head, emphatic, blond hair flapping, denial in every line of his body.

“What the hell are you talking about, why would I-” Kono huffs a laugh entirely devoid of humor and takes another step into the room. Danny matches it, chest puffed up in defense.

“Don’t. Just. Do us both a favor and cut the shit.” She says and there’s desperation tinting the anger.

Danny’s face goes abruptly impassive, the same expression he’d worn earlier when Chin had called.

"I _burned_ , Kono, do you know what that feels like," he hisses. Kono stares steadily back, standing amidst the broken ruins of the door.

"You're killing him," she repeats, calm, intractable. stubborn, unrelenting, matches Danny’s unwavering look with one of her own. He snarls at her.

“You don’t- you can’t-”

“Danny,” Steve finally manages to sit up, vision still swimming, Danny’s a liquid mass that keeps shifting. He shoulders through the dizziness. “Danny,” he repeats and reaches out to him, sets his bare feet on carpet and sways unsteadily when he manages to stand and shuffle towards him. A panicked look shoots across Danny’s face and he jerks back.

“Get away,” he snaps. Kono looks a little smug, though mostly just sad and still pretty pissed.

“You do know,” she says and Danny glares at her.

“Shut up,” he says and scrubs a hand over his face. “Both of you just, just back the fuck off and let me think here, I can’t _think_ with you two crowding me.”

Kono takes a step forward and Danny glares at her and backs away from her and from Steve who’s fallen back on the bed, again, a frustrated noise jerking out of him.

“Shit,” Steve says, slurred. “What’s-” he shakes his head, hisses when it makes the wooziness worse. But there’s determination welling up in his chest, prompted by the wave of despair that washes over him when Danny backs away from him like he’s afraid, like, god, like he’s going to leave him again.

“Get back here,” he says hoarsely. “I didn’t- I didn’t do anywhere near enough to make you leave, remember?” Kono shoots him a startled look.

“What, Steve, no, boss- just no. This isn’t what you want, this isn’t right.”

Steve scrubs a hand irritably across his brow.

“What is, then,” he says and if Danny’s made him tired earlier now’s the first time he’s felt _awake_ in days, even with his vision spinning and those spots pounding away at his thoughts, scattering them to the wind. “I don’t, I’m not going back to- to him being dead.” He says. Out of the corner of his eye he can just make out Danny gaping at him.

“You’re fucking mental McGarrett, you know that?” He says and grabs at his head, again, tugging cruelly on his hair. ”She’s right, god she’s right I’m killing you.” He flings an arm out, sweeps it across Steve’s form. “Look at you, you look like someone hit you with a fucking truck.”

Steve gives him a disdainful look, though the swaying kind of ruins the effect.

“You think I didn’t notice?” He asks, viciously. “You think, what, that I was blind to the shit you were pulling? You were falling apart Danny,” and his voice cracks here, shatters like his life has, too many times to count now. His mom, his dad, to many people to even count back in the Navy, hell even Mary’s beyond his reach and now Danny, too. His whole life has just been one long marching parade of loss and just. Just no. Fuck that, fuck this. He’s tired of his home falling apart on him and yeah he’d been prepared for this, alright. This wasn’t exactly a surprise ever since Danny walked through the door. He can still smell the corpses back in the jungle, can still see grieving mothers dragged away by ethereal sons, yeah, he was there. That happened. That wasn’t a joke then and neither is this.

So he stands up, again, goes to Danny, reaches out to him, pushes him back against the wall like he’s a got a telepathic shield around him that’s shoving Danny away. Kono’s yelling, Danny’s yelling and Steve’s reaching out and everything but Danny's face, his panicked face is distant, blocked out of the here and now.

He lays his hand against Danny’s cheek, cradling it so familiar against his skin and everything goes black.


	2. Omake 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These "omake" are alternate endings, completely independent of each other.

Danny takes a bite out of his sandwich, feels some of the mayo drip out and slide down the side of his face. He sighs and takes a sip of the noxious concoction Steve’s Navy contacts got him hooked up with, waits a minute until it kicks in and he’s not going to drool out the hole in his face, again.  Good stuff that, yeah, he’s glad to have it, blesses its existence everyday.

The homicidal rage thing has passed. He went to see an army shrink who specialized in burn victims and who knew that was even a profession, right? He went every day for three months, then ever other day, then once a week and he’s up to a monthly check up, now, he’s chilled the fuck out. Hasn’t tried to like, maliciously drain the lifeforce of people in weeks, 29 days clean. That’s an entire leap year month right there is what it is. Danny’s proud, he gets a call from Gracie everyday congratulating him and counting each new day out loud.

But Steve _Steve_ needs to quit bringing him gifts every time he breaks his old record since that’s, like, oh somewhere around everyday now? Because  okay he's got no where to put all this, where is he going to put it, huh? All the chotchkies, the little ceramic penguins and tiny snow globes filled with Jersey scenery which where did he even _find_ that in Hawaii and does he really need to explain to Steve that Jersey isn’t Antarctica and there isn’t actually penguins there?  It could be worse, sure, he could be super SEAL anal about it and get him something new every _minute_ he goes over his past record, but. Still.

It's not like Steve is particularly enamored with clearing  out his dad's pad, so is it just  going to go up in the attic with all the crap from when Steve and Mary were kids?

What is the point, is all he wants to know.

Anyways. Back in the present Danny hears the door to the headquarters opening behind him and there’s a presence at his back. Steve drops a kiss on his cheek like they’re little old grandmas or something and Danny might be grinning a titch stupidly, maybe just a bit. Steve’s such an honest to god dweeb.

“You’re smelling a little weird there, Danny,” Steve says, wrinkling his nose at him, which hello? Insulting? “Are you taking the stuff?”

Danny raises his brows at him, pick up the styrofoam cup and wiggles it at him, taking a sip.

“Yes _mom_ , stuff is being partaken of, once with every meal just like the nice be-camoed doctor ordered.” He answers, amused. Steve gives him a big grin and claps him on the shoulder, then heads into his office, presumably to get some actual work done instead of just bothering Danny.


	3. Omake 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These "omake" are alternate endings, completely independent of each other

Steve feels the world drop out from under him, rushing out from under his feet like he’s been plunged into zero gravity. Stars shoot by over head, multicolored and whirling and when he comes back down finally it’s Danny’s face watching him with huge eyes, regret written like a novel across his weathered features.

“Oh babe, this is not what I had in mind at all,” he says. Kono’s still screaming, is shaking something on the floor at Steve’s feet. He blinks and looks down and oh.

Okay.

It’s his body there, laid out like collapsed meat. Danny’s still looking at him.

“Kono,” he says, careful and strangely calm. She looks up and there’s tears streaking her face. She looks almost rabid, but when she catches sight of him she jerks to her feet, eyes huge.

“Shit,” she says, feelingly.

“Um,” he says and he suddenly feels foolish, no longer caught up in the moment and Danny, well Danny looks wrecked and a little grey around the edges. He sways and falls to his knees.

\---------

Steve can’t leave his house, anymore. He’s kinda stuck here in limbo.

His team, though, his team is amazing and after Danny gets over what he’d done, what being _undead_ had made him into and Chin and Kono forgave him (something Steve ever doubts he’ll ever do for himself) they unofficially move head quarters into his living room.

He’s pretty cool with how things have turned out, all things considered. He’d wished in that first week, wished with all his heart that he could trade places with Danny and now, well everthing’s how it should have been in the first place.

He tries to keep these thoughts away from Danny, tries not to talk about it when they’re sitting on the couch together, so close but entire worlds apart. He knows acknowledging it would just piss him off, throw him into one of those morose moods he’s turned to lately. He thinks he already knows, though, gets hints of it in snippets of conversation, muttered words and pointed remarks.

Yeah, so, life’s not so bad, though he wishes he could at least follow his team when they’re out catching the bad guys _he_ set them on, running plans he more often then not concocted for them. Even if he couldn’t touch, only watch, offer a supportive word or a shouted warning. He lets his frustration out on the house until the thermostat reads in the negative and the lights flicker wildly when he gets like that, waits until no one’s keeping him company and tears into his home, his prison.

Then one day he gets a call and he’s gotten good at moving things in his own house, fields calls from his team when he can work up the energy and now’s no different.

“Hey,” he barks out, doesn’t say his name like he used to, too dangerous to when so many people know he’s dead.

“Steve, it’s Danny,” Chin’s clipped tones filter through the speakers.

And just like that, just three words and his world is flipped back end over end over once again and he’s facing the door and it’s just another a mission, just another hurdle to jump over. It’s not even a big one as far as such things go and he has wonder how he was so blind to it before.

The sun shines warm on his skin as his feet touch concrete.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So those of you who are into manga may notice this shares some similarities to a certain set of stories, the ". . . I Whisper to You" series by Naono Bahra. I am not sure where in the world I got the urge to write this fusion from, but it gives me the excuse to write omake for it, like all good manga does. So. Uh. \o/?


End file.
